The end of a calendar year
is a time of self-reflection and goal-setting for many of us. Everyone talks
about New Year’s resolutions—losing weight, exercising more, finding a new
job—but who is still resolving in February? Real
Simple magazine asked its readers to list their top-three things on their
lifelong to-do list. The results, published in the July 2008 issue, included
ideas like these: learn to can tomato sauce without Mom’s help, study German in
Germany, and learn to juggle. This was inspirational for me--life is short! Pick something and do it! Since
I love to learn, I decided to choose a topic or skill to explore as thoroughly
as possible each year and probably beyond. This kind of focus on one new thing
created deeper learning as I explored from various perspectives. My first area
of study was writing itself.
Without intending it to
be a resolution or goal, I took a winter writing course at the local community
college. They called it “Turn Your Passion into Profit”. I had always wanted to
set aside time for writing and this class got me going. I worked on my topics
in class and out of class and tried to match up my finished articles with
paying markets. I bought books on writing, took online courses and One-Day
Intensives at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan. I attended every
author talk I could and listened with envy as Carolyn See, Amy Tan, Mary Higgins
Clark, Salman Rushdie, and David McCullough described their writer’s lives. (I
envied Rushdie’s talent, wit, and success, but not so much his life.) It grew
into something just short of obsession, but has stayed a part of my life. Isn’t
this a better kind of resolution—incorporating a new skill or knowledge into my
consciousness?
The second year of life-changing
study was the year of re-learning French. I was planning a trip to Paris
in the summer and wanted to be able to communicate, watch French TV, and even
eavesdrop on French conversations. Self-guided book study and page-a-day
calendars hadn’t worked in the past, so I signed up for eight-week classes
taught by native speakers at the Alliance Française in Philadelphia. I endured
a humbling placement test but settled into a class with a wonderful, patient
teacher. My classmates were educated people who also enjoyed European travel.
We practiced on Wednesday nights, but I needed more. I rented movies in French
and even watched my favorite DVDs dubbed in French. I discovered a great film
called “Paris, Je t’aime” in which five or six (half-dozen) directors tell
stories set in Paris. One of these, to my delight, was about a middle-aged
woman blowing her savings on a dream trip to Paris. It was narrated in her halting
French mostly learned twenty years ago in college. Hmm. My own trip to France
was a success, and I was even able to meet Marie Montet, a real Parisian, for
dinner at a café.
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| Margie and Marie |
I first learned of Marie in a most unusual
way. I had been getting some of her email by accident as we both had addresses
that started with “mmontet”. An email from a former suitor of hers, Joel, was
the first to land in my inbox by mistake. I carefully wrote back to him in
French explaining that I wasn’t the “mmontet” he thought I was. We became
unlikely pen pals once we discovered we were both really English speakers. I
explained that my French wasn’t good enough for me to know exactly what I had
read. He explained the mishap to Marie, referred to as Ma Princesse in that original missive. I got to meet Joel in New
York a few years earlier, and finally now I would meet Marie in Paris. We dined at a lovely
café in the Tuileries Garden adjacent to the Louvre just as the sun was setting.
Marie, a lawyer, was the quintessential chic French woman: slim, naturally
beautiful, and wittily intelligent. We
didn’t look alike, but shared something more than the brown hair and brown eyes
from some long-ago French ancestors. Never abandoning my quest to improve my
French language skills, I asked Marie to help me learn to pronounce chantilly (whipped cream) and grenouille (frog), words I find
troublesome. My memories of that evening actually glow as if candle-lit.
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| Hamilton-Trenton Marsh |
All the while I was
continuing to write (and publish) but my accompanying photographs were
decidedly amateur. I designated the next year The Year of the Photograph. I worked on my
photography skills while assessing what features I needed in a more
sophisticated camera besides the double-digit megapixels now standard. New
books on digital photography were acquired. I subscribed to Popular Photography. I went on an early
spring nature photography tour in the local marsh with David Simchock, a New
Jersey photographer and photography teacher. We shot young unfurling ferns,
swans on the lake, beaver dams, nascent water lilies, a rotting tree trunk with
the face of an old man, and an unsuspecting fisherman from across the lake. “Margie,
you’re going to have to stop shooting in auto mode so that you have more
control.” “Be aware of your depth of field and blur the background to make the
subject in focus pop.” He was very patient with me and helped me identify what
features I needed for my purpose.
As directed, I
mentioned his name when I visited his recommended shop to finally purchase the
handsome Nikon D80. “Oh we charge people more when they mention HIM,” said the
young helpful guy behind the counter. “It’s because we have to deal with him.” I
told David this when I went on his Center City Philadelphia photo tour with my
new gear on a beastly hot day in July, and not till the end of the day did I
add that they had thrown in a free memory card, too. David is a teaser, but I
tease back. I’m still learning the
buttons and switches on the D80, but now I have three lenses to shoot with and
my photos have indeed improved. My travel photos from a tour of Germany this
year were so much better than photos I’d shot in the past, and I was even
successful with some holiday night shots at Rockefeller Center.
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| Ospreys in their nest |
“Off the starboard side
of the Skimmer see the osprey stand: the female is in the nest—you can see her
head—and the male is sitting next to it!” Captain Bob showed us many varieties
of shorebirds that day on the Salt Marsh Safari, but he seemed most enthusiastic
about these ospreys. We were gliding along the shallow marsh water on a
flat-bottomed boat called a skimmer. Herring gulls, laughing gulls, terns and
oystercatchers are residents of this marshy area between Cape May and Wildwood,
New Jersey. “Over there! Look at that grassy part of the peat bog! That’s a
snowy egret!” Click—I was most appreciative of the snowy egret sighting because
it posed majestically for my camera: its sleek white feathers and yellow beak
against the spring green grass.
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| Snowy Egret in the Salt Marsh |
It was on this Salt
Marsh Safari that I realized bird watching is not as mind-numbing as I thought
it would be. As a writer now of all things Cape May, I knew I could no longer
gloss over this most important feature of the region’s identity. The World
Series of Birding happens here! I had to get out there, look at birds,
photograph them, and learn how birders bird. To my surprise, I was completely
captivated by the Salt Marsh Safari, start to finish. Birding, I declared,
would be my Thing for 2009.
Over by the Cape May
Point Lighthouse one late summer day when my camera was still new, I wandered
over to the hawk watching platform where all the birders meet. I was shooting
non-specifically at the lake in case anything interesting flew by. At this
point in my birding career, most birds would have to wear a nametag for me to
identify them. “Are you shooting the glossy ibis?” a birder called over to me.
“Uh no. Where
exactly…?” He let me look through his rather gigantic scope attached to a
sturdy tripod. Through the scope’s powerful lens I saw the most incredible and
exotic black bird with a red sheen and yellow beak. The same bird had been
invisible through my camera lens. “Oh yeah,” I thought, “I’m ready for this
birding thing.”
The word ‘resolution’
doesn’t seem to fit my yearly endeavors anymore. I’m amused at how they’ve
grown from the first intended dalliance with writing to what would more
accurately be called adventures. These endeavors are dovetailing and
overlapping and informing each other in a way I hadn’t imagined, creating a
whole new side to my life. Although way out of my comfort zone then, I have had the
most unique experiences meeting Joel and Marie, learning real photography with
David, and starting to recognize the birds I see at the shore. More recently I've practiced Latin and crocheting, and attempted to read the works of Charles Dickens. Not every choice sticks, but I don't think I'll ever tire of these pursuits. So what's on tap for 2013? I'm going to work on boosting my freelance stuff (writing, photographing, speaking, consulting), starting with a magazine query mega-blitz. I already got some great new business cards that promote all four branches of my favorite pursuits.
